Written by

associated press

The cast of "The Outsiders" was a rare assemblage of young, upcoming talent -- in Matt Dillon's words, "everyone wanted to be cast in it."

Coppola made the movie at the urging of schoolkids. A librarian at the Lone Star Junior High School in Fresno, Calif wrote him.

"It was signed by like 110 little signatures," he recalled. "Who can ignore that?"

He didn't. And on Sept. 20 he's putting out a two-disc DVD with a version 22 minutes longer.

As with "Apocalypse Now" and "One From the Heart," Coppola succumbed to pressure to shorten "The Outsiders."

"And sometimes, the wise thing to do is to lengthen," he maintained.

The casting, led by Francis Ford Coppola and producer Fred Roos, was untraditional -- an all-day affair on a sound stage with actors being rotated to read together. More than 20 years later, the film's cast reads half '80s nostalgia, half contemporary A-list.

C. Thomas Howell: Ponyboy Curtis was Howell's breakout role. On "The Outsiders" DVD, Howell says, "I feel like I really owe my career to that project." He would go on to star in many of the movies likely to be mocked on a VH1 special, including, "Red Dawn," and "The Hitcher." Now living with his wife and three children in California, he has kept busy mostly with TV movies.

Ralph Macchio: A year after "The Outsiders," Macchio would star in his career-making movie, "The Karate Kid." Since that trilogy, Macchio, now 43, has never managed to grow beyond Mr. Miyagi's tutelage, but did have a nice role in 1993's "My Cousin Vinny" as one of the "utes" falsely accused of murder. He also made a cameo as himself earlier this year on HBO's "Entourage."

Diane Lane: Lane had been an actress for much of her childhood, but her turn as the sweet, red-haired dream in "The Outsiders" made her known. Her career might be at its apogee right now: she was nominated for an Oscar in 2003 for "Unfaithful."

Matt Dillon: Like Lane, Dillon's filmography is checkered. After typecasting himself into troubled rebels -- he starred in "Singles," and "There's Something About Mary." This year, he has been lauded for his role in "Crash."

Tom Cruise: Though he had a small part in "The Outsiders," no one has risen higher than Cruise. Even then, though, everyone on the set could see Cruise's serious and intense approach to acting. Roos says, "I think he saw where he wanted to be even from that age."

Rob Lowe: After Lowe's big screen debut in "The Outsiders," he was "left for years wondering why" most of his part was cut -- but in the new edition Lowe has been restored. He has since mixed comedy ("Wayne's World," the "Austin Powers" movies) with Oval Office drama ("The West Wing").

Patrick Swayze: Swayze was as '80s as anybody thanks to movies like "Dirty Dancing" and "Roadhouse." After "Ghost" and "Point Break" in the early '90s, Swayze fell off for most of the decade, but had a small part in the cult hit "Donnie Darko."

Emilio Estevez: Though he's been MIA for years, the 43-year-old will soon direct "Bobby," a movie he wrote about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. The cast includes Anthony Hopkins and Elijah Wood.

"I think for me, the showdown was when my granddaughter's class asked me to come and show the film and I was embarrassed to show the normal version," says Coppola. "So I cobbled together a version of the whole movie, the whole novel, and I remember looking at it and wondering, 'Why did I ever cut this down?'"

The chief addition to the movie (subtitled "The Complete Novel") is a long opening sequence that better establishes the characters. There is more of the Curtis brothers, including one scene showing an intimate conversation in bed.